text by Chen Chih-Chien
Ripple
The artist’s concept focuses on a line of time and the philosophy of time through the practice of dividing and re-arranging it. The main picture of “Ripple”’ is composed by divided time frame and re-presents city landscape. From time to time, the artist is looking for unattended time lost in the city and film/record them for one whole day. Through filming, the blooming of a plant in the corner is captured, and captured images are restructured in a concentric circle. All those surreal images of 24-hour of a day is presented synchronously. Therefore, the time is wrinkled like ripple in the picture as a mirror of the landscape. (2009)
About my method of survival in the urban drift
This work attempts to describe the process of positioning oneself in a city through fragments of visual memory. In this memory, the climate is hazy, and the viewpoint is vertical. It is an airborne position, as well as a habitual method of observation. And by intentionally allowing for physical metamorphosis, it facilitates entry into a representation of my thinking space. The succession is arranged vertically according viewpoint, keeping a constant distance between each object, and the positions between layers are readjusted according to oscillations dictated by the strength of currents. Under these conditions, this space changes once more, with time twisting the third dimension. Memory marches forward like a procession of train carriages. This familiar time-space principle is the type of memory dimension that I excel in building.
By this logical drift, being lost in thought, there is often a “disconnect” with environmental noise, but this is not a great obstacle. I maintain the swaying-a seemingly natural flowing-by simulation using commonplace mechanical devices. The boat uses a simple motor and cogs to reach its destination-most of my boats look this way. During the voyage, its surface shines like a polished apple. This is not a high-tech journey; the motion of the boat relies merely on light to transmit a pulse. It is an extravagant method, but there is no alternative.
I operate these machines and tools in the urban drift, hoping not to sink. I worry, so I am building another ship while this one oscillates to assuage my fears. At this time, the other ship has not been completed, so I will continue to float in this manner for the time being. (2008)
Date Line
Date Line is the abbreviation of the International Date Line, a universal system of time zones devised by an international committee to overcome the issue of the sun shining at different geographical locations at different times as the earth orbits. Thus it is 8:00 PM in Taipei at the sane moment it is 7:00 AM in New York. This “now” is represented by different abbreviations in places around the world. Date Line expresses the artist’s probing doubts on the universally approved definition of ‘time’. Shooting a panorama of one specific urban site over the course of one particular day,24 hours worth of images are collected in a 360-degree collage, with each long, thin bar an archive of time’s passage during one day. In this way, sun, moon, day and night mingle and overlap in an alternating order. With the collection of singular moments at one time and place, I generate a surreal image that allows the past and the present to coexist. Within this time and space, is the ‘Date Line’ we use and abide by in reality necessary? Real “time” has no boundaries, but if we absolutely must delineate, these 360 image bars can be our Date Line. (2006)
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